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The complete, unabridged Mahabharata The Mahabharata is one of the greatest stories ever told. Though the basic plot is widely known, there is much more to the epic than the dispute between Kouravas and Pandava that led to the battle in Kur uk shetra. It has innumerable sub-plots that accommodate fascinating meanderings and digressions, and it has rarely been translated in full, given its formidable length of 80,000 shlokas or couplets. The magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation of the epic is based on the Critical Edition compiled at the Bhandakar Research Institue. Volume 2 consists of the last part of the Adi Parva, the complete Sabha Parva and the early part of the Vana Parva. The story covers Arjuna's stay in the forest; his marriage to Subhadra; the burning of the Khandava forest; the Pandavas building the assembly hall and conquering the world; Yudhishthira’s crowning as emperor; Duryodhana's envy at the Pandavas’ prosperity; the two games with the dice; Droupadi's disrobing; Arjuna's encounter with Shiva; and ends with the Nala and Damayanti story. Every conceivable human emotion figures in the Mahabharata, the reason why the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination. In this lucid, nuanced and confident translation, Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers.

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Krishna Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, also known as Vyāsa or Veda-Vyāsa (वेदव्यास, the one who classified the Vedas into four parts) is a central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions. He is traditonally regarded as the author of the Mahābhārata, although it is also widely held that he only composed the core of the epic, the Bhārata. A significant portion of the epic later was only added in later centuries, which then came to be known as the Mahābhārata. The date of composition of this epic is not known - It was definitvely part of the traditions in Indian subcontinent at the time Gautam Buddha (~500 BCE) which would suggest it having been already around for atleast a few centuries. It was chiefy put down in the written form only somewhere between 300 BCE to 300 CE.

As the name would suggest, Vyāsa is believed to have categorised the primordial single Veda into its four canonical collections. He is also considered to be the scribe of Purānās, ancient Hindu texts eulogizing various deities, primarily the divine Trimurti God in Hinduism through divine stories.